Running Order

Now Massacre For Boys In Colour has gone to the printers and the panic has abated (slightly) I can at last reveal what's actually going to be in it:

Cover - Crusader & Dog by Steven Denton. Logo by Bolt -01.

Walking Wounded: Night of the Big Heat by Chris Denton, Steven Denton & Bolt-01.

The Crusader: Honey Trap by Chris Denton, Bolt-01 and Richmond Clements.

The Diogenes Club: The Game is a Foot by Matthew Hunt and The Wrong Man by Chris Denton, Steven Denton & Bolt-01.

Jimmy Baker Animal Hatmaker: Three Lions by Chris Denton & Steven Denton.



Bosher's Goals: Hands on the Trophy by Chris Denton & Steven Denton.

Badland Rules by Steven Denton.

Walking Wounded: Hot Air by Chris Denton & Steven Denton.

Back Cover: Nazi Zombie by Paul Harrison-Davies.

So in total that's 36 pages (40 with the cover sides) and pretty much everything we've done in colour, including lots and lots of brand new stuff.

Deadline Deaderline Deadestline

We're getting pretty close to the the Thing now and there's not a lot of time left to make our comic ready. Eeek!

Oh well, at least we're not far away now. Here's the coloured and lettered version of Night of the Big Heat page one:



Thanks to Bolt-01 for doing a great job on the lettering front, as ever!

In other news this week I've now created a Massacre for Boys Facebook group. As I am pretty hardline in my anti-spam stance, you'll never receive an invitation to join the group from me, but that doesn't mean we don't want you! On the contrary, please join now! If you do, I can at least promise we'll not fill your inbox with spurious updates a la some annoying groups I could mention but won't out of politeness.

Massacre For Boys In Cover

So here's the cover of MFBIC:



Art by Steve, logo kindly contributed by Bolt-01.

The official release date is March 28th. The complete contents of the comic is yet to be finalized, but as soon as it is I'll post that here too.

The Tempest

PR is not my strongest point, and nor are our humble efforts automatically guaranteed press coverage of any kind. So it's fantastic when one of the big players gives us the time of day, let alone the oxygen of publicity.

So hats off to Forbidden Planet International, always a friend of MFB, for publishing their review of Walking Wounded this week.

Particular thanks are due to Richard Bruton, who agreed to take a look at the comics and who added some further comments about the WW platoon's printed adventures on his own blog.

It's testament to the influence of the FPI blog that two of my friends independently noticed this article go up on the day it appeared.

To cap it all, yesterday I received a cheque from FPI in payment for the sales of Walking Wounded #1 through their website.

This is the first time a third party has ever actually paid me for comics they've sold on our behalf. There are three other third parties that probably should have given me some money by now and haven't, so it was maybe more of a surprise than it should have been and just emphasizes what a classy outfit Forbidden Planet are.

In fact, you should probably go and buy something from them right now :)

What Next for The Animal Hatmaker?

As work on Massacre For Boys in Colour nears completion, I notice that we have a 1-page Jimmy Baker script that won't be included for want of an available artist. As our future plans mean if it misses this comic it won't appear for years, I very much fear this story will remain an orphan.

Shame as I reckon it's not bad at all:

JIMMY BAKER ANIMAL HATMAKER: Bones
A US Format colour 1-pager by Chris Denton


1) A distinguished looking, scholarly gentleman, CURATOR JONES, stares disconsolate at an open and empty till. He is sitting at a box office window, which we can see because the word “Box Office” is visible, reversed in the glass.

CAPTION: NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, LONDON, 1952.

JONES: NO VISITORS, AGAIN! I NEED TO DO SOMETHING FAST OR WE’RE GOING BANKRUPT.

2) Detail of Curator Jones’ finger skimming down to the “Animal Hatmakers” section of the Yellow Pages. Just above this is a small advert for “Lady Vanessa, Animal Hairdresser.” The only animal hatmaker in the book is Jimmy Baker, and he has a large ad, which also doubles rather cunningly for the logo. The story title and credits can probably fit around here too.

3) Medium shot of Curator Jones gesticulating wildly, with JIMMY BAKER looking on. Behind them are a very grand set of double doors.

JONES: SO YOU SEE, MR BAKER. WE SIMPLY DON’T KNOW WHAT KIND OF HATS THE DINOSAURS WORE!

LINK: OF COURSE, PEOPLE AREN’T INTERESTED IN ANIMALS WITH BARE HEADS SO IT LOOKS LIKE THE MUSEUM IS FINISHED!

4) Close on Jimmy, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Behind him we can see part of the tail of a brontosaurus skeleton.

JIMMY: NOT NECESSARILY, PROFESSOR. I HAVE ONE OR TWO IDEAS…

5) Close on a newspaper-style billboard. It proclaims “T. REX – PREHISTORIC HIGHWAYMAN” and pasted over the bottom right hand corner of this is in slightly smaller text is the phrase “SOLD OUT”.

CAPTION: A MONTH LATER…

6) Close on the skull of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It is wearing a Dick Turpin-style Tricorn hat.

T. REX (DISTORT): STAND AND DELIV – RAAARGH!

CAPTION: JIMMY BAKER COMES UP TRUMPS AGAIN!

Any artist out there fancy doing a quick job on this?

Name that plane

So, here's the first page of pencil and inks for Night of the Big Heat:

It will be coloured, but I thought I'd post it now as it looks to me to be a fairly perfect page of comic art. Obviously, I put this all down to the script :)

The plane is based on a real one (WW2 buffs might recognise the make and model? Let us know if you do) and I did specify it in the script. However what I did not do is look too closely into how the plane was laid out internally, I just made some assumptions based on how I expected it to be. Eg basically like a smaller Boeing 747.

Of course, as all graduate management trainees know only too well, to assume makes an ass out of u and me. So when Steve was researching it he noticed that some of my directions were slightly, not to put to fine a point on it, impossible. He's corrected them all and that's meant some changes to some of the panels, like frame 2 on this page for instance.

I bring this up because I think it's a great example of how story-telling responsibilities in comics are divided between writer and artist. Even in the British method, where each panel is specified by the writer, the artist should have the creative freedom to be fairly liberal about he interprets these. As a writer this has never worried me at all because you would expect the artist to have a better grasp of how things work visually.

Eeek, it's 2009!

Happy New Year! Or at least, it will be if we can defy the deadlines and get our latest comic ready for the Thing.

I've written a new Walking Wounded 6-pager to go into Massacre for Boys in Colour, and as I've got nothing better to blog I thought I'd explain a little about how this story came about.

Necessity being the mother of invention, the main reason why I wrote this script is because we really need a new Walking Wounded story in MFBIC. They're our main brand, especially at the Thing, and we don't want to turn up without a new WW adventure.

Then I needed an idea. I actually find it pretty easy to come up with new concepts for Walking Wounded strips, I think it's because their universe has been going round my head for the better part of twenty years. This one started off as a response to Paul Harrison-Davies' fine zombie pinup (see previous posts). The image was so powerful it gave me the pivotal moment of a story pretty much straight away.

So it had to be a tale featuring our old friends, the Nazi zombies. But I needed a new setting for them, and that's where my wife chipped in by reminding me about high-concept horror Snakes on a Plane. Okay, so it's not that great a movie, but Zombies on a Plane, now that could really work...

As the plot was now taking shape, the title became obvious. I had called the first Nazi zombie appearance "Island of Terror" after a 60s British sci-fi movie I greatly admire, and so naturally their return would have to named after that film's companion piece, Night of the Big Heat.

So that gave me two more important details, as I could scarcely now set the strip during the day or omit to finish it with a good deal of flames. After that, it was pretty much a case of transcribing into Microsoft Word what I had in my head. Well, almost. Comic scripting is pretty technical so I had to have each panel on each page planned before I actually wrote the script. That's essential if you don't want the finished comic to be crap.

Now I have done all the writing I need to do so I am going to spend the next few months as a publisher...

The Colour of Money

With 2008 drawing to a close, we've been making good progress on Massacre for Boys in Colour #1. I have completed my script for a new Walking Wounded mini-adventure and Steve has been prepping some of the other material we're shoving in at no extra charge.

Our web strip Bosher's Goals: Hands on the Trophy has never appeared in print and we both feel it deserves to and that MFBIC is the perfect opportuntity to set that right. To complement the story, Steve's produced a new Bosher pinup:

But wait, that's not in colour! Surely everything in a comic called "Massacre For Boys in Colour" should be well, in colour. Damn right:

A very Merry Christmas or if you prefer, Happy Holidays to one and all.

Whatever Happened to Massacre For Boys?

Ah, hello again.

Bit of a gap since the last post, due to a few non-comics issues, not least the fact my appendix rather inconveniently decided to burst! Still, a rather hastily convened operation fixed that little problem, and I'm up and about again now.

Our plans for next year have changed somewhat. As Walking Wounded #3 is in no way going to be ready for the Thing we've decided to push that back and put the finishing touches to Massacre For Boys in Colour #1 instead. This is, as regular blog visitors will recall, our anthology title that we've been slow-cooking for a long time, and that we're now almost ready to sign off on.

As a late addition we're adding a new Walking Wounded strip inspired by Paul Harrison-Davies' zombie pinup. I'm just polishing the script now. This will be in addition to the already announced wonders we have in the pipeline, including an exclusive massacre-style superhero adventure, The Crusader: Honey Trap with art by Bolt-01 and colours by Richmond Clements.

In other news, Steve has finished art duties on his latest Futurequake assignment. I'm hoping to post some examples soon...

Plague of the Zombies

A double whammy of shuffling undead action this week.

The inestimably talented Paul Harrison-Davies has contributed the following Nazi Zombie pinup to Massacre For Boys In Colour #1:



I love Paul's work (check out MY robot! on his ComicSpace page) and am personally thrilled that he has contributed to our title. The pin-up is intended to trail the return of the Nazi Zombies to the pages of Walking Wounded in WW#4. If it wasn't for the lack of aforementioned zombies in MFBIC#1 then this would probably be the cover.

Paul's also blogged about this piece and re-imagined it as a book-cover, which it could so easily be...

Meanwhile, Massacre's regular artist has not been leaving the field of re-animated corpses untrampled either. Steve's zombie strip for Nicolas Wilson is now available here:

Survival: New Corpse Smell

For those that love their special features, you should also check out Steve's sketches and the text version of the story.

And a Third Thing...

We're now confirmed attendees at:



The Thing is taking place at London Mile End on Saturday March 28th 2009. This will be our third consecutive year exhibiting and it's always a great showcase for indie comics. The bigger conventions such as Bristol and Birmingham mix up the big names with the small fish and it can mean that whilst those events are great too, many of the visitors are not really into the wild side of comics. At the Thing everyone who goes knows what they're in for.

Mr Thing has done a great job on the show website this year, and he's maintained the tradition of the home page displaying a random picture from any of the exhibitors. Our random picture is this one:

You may notice it's from our contribution to last year's Thing Anthology. That's because we don't have any art available for this year yet. Steve's still working on a strip for Futurequake but hopefully he'll finish that soon and move on to Massacre stuff again.

I love the Anthology, it's a real plus for the show and it's really nice to see your work in a high-quality colour book. This year I suggested the theme, which is "Mars", and have already penned our contribution, which is a change of direction for us but also really in keeping with the whole Massacre ethos.

Roll on March 28th!

Will There Be A Comics Credit Crunch?

So, in these days of global finanacial crisis I guess what millions of people around the world are really wondering is will it affect British comics?



Well, to a cetain degree it already has. As the Forbidden Planet blog has reported, this year's Bristol convention is going to be much smaller than in previous years. The credit crisis is explicitly blamed, although I am not entirely convinced this is the whole story.

It's personally annoying that Bristol has down-sized in the year we were hoping to debut there, and by all accounts exhibiting is now invitation-only, which of course favours established names and not new talent. Still needs must, and I am hopeful that assurances for normal service in 2010 prove accurate.

Besides, I am not exactly flush with cash at the moment myself, so a large bill for doing Bristol is probably not what I need. As it is, I will be funding Massacre's likely appeareance at the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing by the proceeds of eBay auctions and - if I can find enough crap I don't want anymore - the printing costs for Walking Wounded #3 will be financed in the same way.

Still regardless of my own slightly straightened-circumstances (I work for a bank, possibly not the best of sectors right now) I am committed to ensuring that Massacre for Boys continues. And thankfully comic-making is not paticularly expensive, so we're pretty robust in the face of the looming, inevitable recession.

At the top of the tree, I do hope that Rebellion will be alright. 2000AD I'm sure will continue but there do have to be fears for my own favoured title, Judge Dredd Megazine, which is now a fiver a month, including a bundled second comic of reprinted recent material. I actually think it's a good product, but it does seem an obvious cutback for cash-strapped fans, especially long-term customers who have read all the reprints when they first came round.

Massacre in the Megazine

In September 2006 I penned an article for the main Massacre for Boys website that was supposed to coincide with the publication of our Holt Bros story in Judge Dredd Megazine. By the time the strip actually saw print the article was well out of date so I never published it. However, looking back it is quite interesting, and so I am presenting the piece here:

In January 2006 Steve and I were already working on a Walking Wounded strip, the soldiers versus zombies WW2 "epic", Island of Terror. I had written about half of it when I came across news of the forthcoming Small Press segment of Judge Dredd the Megazine on Bugpowder. Basically, the offer was that self-publishers could get about 6-pages of their work showcased in the UK's second greatest comic. There was some controversy amongst the small press community about whether this was a good thing, mostly it seemed because contributors to the segment were to be unpaid.

However. as new entrants to the comics world and 2000AD fans to boot it was an opportunity too good to pass up. We discussed the possibility of submitting a portion of Island of Terror or indeed a specially written Walking Wounded 6-pager but much as we love those characters they are a bit limited in their appeal, relying as they do on some kind of familiarity with 70s British war comics. So we turned instead to the idea that we were always planning to use after doing an issue of Walking Wounded: a pair of Paranormal Investigators based in Edwardian London called the Holt Brothers.

The requirements for the story were actually quite complex. It had to function as both an introduction to and a trailer for Holt Bros, but also we were determined that it would be a standalone story in its own right. There's no way we wanted to disappoint Megazine readers with some incomprehensible beginning to a tale they would never finish. The plans I had for existing stories were all much longer, so I had to come up with something else that could be slotted in before the first issue of the Holt Bros comic proper.

Looking at my ideas for the series they were pretty action-horror orientated, so I decided to focus on a different aspect of their world and go for a dose of detective fiction. The concept of The Locked Room is that a basic mystery is established and then we see how such things play out in the Holts' world. For my own amusement, I derived the names of all the supporting characters from the world of Dr Syn. I came up with a quick first draft which got the story about right but was light on characterization. A second pass fixed that and it was over to Steve...

I was expecting the artwork to be dark and moody, full of shadows and fog. However, Steve decided to accentuate the detective elements of the strip rather than the gothic ones and instead he came up with panels that are bright and rich, full of period detail. It's a decision that was absolutely right. Laying on the Hammer pastiche from the word go would have been a massive mistake, much better to tell the tale on its own terms.

The prospect of exposure in a professional magazine forced us to confront the thorny issue of lettering. Previously Steve had hand-lettered our work but that was not likely to impress reigning Megazine editor Matt Smith. Steve has a friend that can letter to professional standard so approached him about the work. Initially he agreed but then pulled out, whuch was probably to the good as Steve then took on the duties himself, this time using Photoshop. It wasn't his favourite ever assignment but Steve took to it like a duck to plum sauce and the end results are pretty fantastic.

The strip was ready by the end of March and I submitted it to Matt on the 31st. Happily, it took him about 30 minutes to reply in the affirmative. We were delighted, not just for the exposure but also because this was the first real validation of our efforts to progress in the comics world. Suitably heartened we returned to Walking Wounded. Once we're finally done with that (not long now) it'll be time to return to the Holts, starting with a rather promising scenario featuring killer spiders in Whitechapel...

Chris Denton 14/09/2006

Of course, by "not long now" I obviously meant "By the end of the decade. Possibly."

You can read the Holt Bros story that appeared in the Meg here.

The Massacre For Boys Story

Welcome to our new bloghome! To mark this momentous move I thought it might be quite cool to briefly recap The Story So Far...

In our teenage years back during the mid 90s, my brother Steve and I would create our own comic strips. The last and best of these was a 26-page war story pastiche called Walking Wounded: The Resistance That Went Mad.

Fast forward about ten years to 2005 and our interest in comics was resurfacing. We saw that that was a thriving British small press comics scene and thought it might be cool to get involved. We had this strip lying around that had never been published and so decided now might be the time to put it out. So we did:

Well, we liked Resistance but obviously it was not a reflection of our abilities in 2005. Therefore, happy at how easy it had become to publish in decent quality we pressed on with plans for an all-new Walking Wounded story, Island of Terror.

Quite early in the creation of this issue we became aware of the Judge Dredd Megazine small press section, and specifically that they were open to submissions of completed strips. Although we hadn't been going long we decided this was an opportunity too good to miss and fairly quickly knocked up a 6-page detective-horror story featuring Holt Bros, Edwardian paranormal investigators and again originally a product of our teenage years.

Thankfully, Tharg liked it and accepted the story. (It finally appeared after 18 months in Judge Dredd Megazine #261. You can read the strip on our ComicSpace page.) Buoyed by this unexpected success, we proceeded with what was to become the first issue of Walking Wounded proper:

The reaction was quite good, if not spectacular. We launched at the 2007 UK Web and Mini Comix Thing, selling a couple of dozen copies or so. There was enough encouragement to continue and we were definitely getting better with each new page. This process of improvement was greatly enhanced when Futurequake Press luminary Bolt-01 came on board to letter the second issue. Steve had been doing some art for FQP, who are imho the leading publishers of the British scene, and we'd met Bolt at Bristol so it was great when he agreed to contribute.

The second issue of Walking Wounded was ready for Thing 2008, and we went back knowing we had a much stronger product this time:

Fortunately we weren't the only ones who felt Walking Wounded was now pretty decent. Rather amazingly, it got nominated for Favourite Black & White Comic - British at the 2007 Eagle Awards (which took place in May 2008). We didn't win, but did go to the ceremony and had a great time. For us just to get that amount of recognition was fantastic.

So hopefully now we're on an upward trajectory. Walking Wounded #3 is written and a new title, Massacre For Boys In Colour, is virtually finished. Bolt-01 and his compadre Richmond Clements have lent their considerable artistic talents to a superhero strip that will be headlining the MFBIC debut.

We'll probably stay quiet for a few months now, getting it all together, but our goals for 2009 are to play the big shows and make more of a splash then ever...